The squat shadow of one of New York's oldest icons stretched across the East River waterfront and the old Tobacco Warehouse, where my biggest problem, apparently, was the likelihood of lapsing into a food coma - something that I'm pretty sure is not covered by my HMO.

It seemed as though there was only one thing I couldn't find: a reason to go to Manhattan.

It's hardly breaking news that in recent years Brooklyn - that eternal sidekick or forgotten stepchild to Manhattan - has been earning attention for a previously unthinkable level of renewal. Suddenly, there were hip and contemporary neighborhoods, reclaimed-waterfront parks, the first major pro sports team in more than half a century, and a food scene that has little to do with egg creams, Coney Island dogs or pizza by-the-slice.

The changes have been alternately called a long-awaited renaissance or a gentrification-driven hipster apocalypse. More important than the trends is the bigger question: Somewhere along the way, when no one was looking, did New York's most populous borough become a destination in its own right?

During a recent trip, I set out to find if there are enough new experiences in Brooklyn's downtown and surrounding neighborhoods for travelers so that, for once, the behemoth city across the river is the afterthought, not the goal.

Patchwork city

It's not that Brooklyn has ever had an inferiority complex - there is an inherent pride in always being considered the scrappy underdog. It's just that residents are more likely to quietly believe in the strengths of their hometown, while Manhattanites prefer to remove all doubt. Over and over. Whether or not anybody asked.

More than three times the size of Manhattan and with about a million more people, Brooklyn would be the fourth largest city in the United States if New York City's five boroughs filed for divorce. Historically, much of that population can be traced to waves of immigration during the past 150 years, creating a city of neighborhoods based mostly on ethnic or cultural background. Largely, that continues today (although some neighborhoods have changed hands more often than others).

The most extreme part of the recent makeover has been in and around Brooklyn's downtown, the neighborhoods most likely to have witnessed the latest wave of immigration - young workers, couples, artists and entrepreneurs fleeing the oppression of sky-scraping rental rates across the East River.

The poster child for renewal has been Williamsburg, with its collection of creative restaurants and of-the-moment clubs, but there are also plenty of new diversions in Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Red Hook and DUMBO, among others.

The fact that most of the change is centralized makes a case for being labeled an "easily walkable destination."

Going underground

There is a history here with museums. When it opened in 1897, the Brooklyn Museum was designed to be one of the largest on the planet and today still houses roughly a million objects in more than half a million square feet of space. (Next door, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens just opened a modern visitor's center last year, giving the venerable institution a needed makeover.)

It would be difficult to argue, however, that any other museum in Brooklyn (or anywhere) is more suitably sited than the New York Transit Museum. After 10 minutes of looking for the address and a grand edifice on Boerum Place, I found a relatively innocuous subway entrance and descended the worn steps into what was once the Court Street IND subway station in Brooklyn Heights, built in 1936 and closed a decade later.

The entire station, little changed structurally from when it was in use, now houses hundreds of exhibits, models, learning stations and artifacts that cover all manner of transit in a metropolitan area where public transportation is a bigger part of life than in most places.

The displays cover topics from how the third rail powers the cars to the history of eco-friendly buses to the wildly popular Miss Subways promotion that started in the 1940s.

It wasn't until I descended to the next floor down that I had the first of two surprises. First, the Court Street train platform is intact and lined end to end on both sides with dozens of subway cars from nearly every era, most of them restored to the point of having their original advertisements.

I sat in the wooden and plastic seats, hung from the hand loops and savored the ads for cigarettes, Broadway shows from the '70s and a new James Bond movie called "Thunderball." The cars were motionless time machines, and the only thing missing was the squeal and roar of a subway under way, coupled with the unpredictable rocking, starts and halts.

The second surprise came later, talking to a half dozen Brooklyn residents; none had ever heard of the museum.

Netting a new team

In a borough that had almost no major chain hotels five years ago, I apparently struck the mother lode. I was staying in the newly opened Hotel Indigo, but the single block of Duffield Street near Fulton Street Mall also offered an Aloft Hotel and a Sheraton. (What the Indigo's rooms lack in space, the hotel makes up for in Brooklyn personality - one package includes the room and a large pizza with two toppings for each night you're there.)

The hotel is walking distance from the new-ish Barclays Center, although it was difficult to not be distracted along the way up Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn's main artery (appropriately so, if only because it runs at an odd angle to everything around it).

While these were attractions that speak to the borough's past, I was more interested this trip in the Barclays Center. The modern arena is now home to the NBA's Brooklyn Nets - a clear source of community pride, if the signs, banners and jerseys around town are an accurate indicator. Standing in front of the building's plaza, trying to understand the formless roof with a swimming-pool-shaped hole in it, I noticed the flagpole.

According to a plaque at the base, the pole stood in Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers - until the Dodgers ducked out in 1957 and the field was demolished in 1960. It's easy to overlook community pride as an element of a worthy destination. If the lingering bitterness from losing the Dodgers is an indication, a pro sports team - especially one that has the town's name - can change a place.

Avenue of change

Atlantic Avenue, a commercial street lined with shops and cafes, is one of the better examples of the conflicting perceptions of "neighborhood renaissance" versus "death through gentrification." While the Middle Eastern and Mediterrranean cultural influence is still there, the improved landscape has attracted a few chains: The Oriental Bakery & Grocery is now neighbors with an Urban Outfitters; the Damascus Bread Shop is across the street from the commanding South Brooklyn Savings Bank, a 1923 Italian-Renaissance-style building that now houses a Trader Joe's.

Most of the "neighborhood shops" remain, but the new fabric includes more chic cafes, quirky gastropubs and hip bars, including Floyd, where bartender Leah Howe told me she sees the changes as the ethnic neighborhood "reaching a new audience."

I had gone into Floyd mostly because of a sign out front, "We don't serve fish and chips," but also because of the indoor bocce court that takes up about a third of the laid-back, couch-filled pub.

"Pretty much all the neighborhoods of Brooklyn are ethnic neighborhoods. Some have gentrified, some haven't," Howe said between pours. "You wouldn't walk around here 10 years ago. This part of Brooklyn was pretty seedy."

A few doors down is Pete's Waterfront Ale House, where the chalkboard menu outside listed the day's specials as pastrami spare ribs, a monkfish po'boy, a venison burger and tandoori chicken over mixed greens.

Clearly, lack of diversity isn't an issue.

On the waterfront

You could make a case that if the Brooklyn Bridge Park of today had been around in the 1880s, they would have built the bridge faster.

What was once decrepit piers, warehouses and industrial waterfront is now a 1.3-mile stretch of lawns, bike paths, playgrounds, sports fields, tiny harbors, ecological habitat and a promenade to tie them together.

Before, people might come down here for views of the other side, but from where I was standing, Manhattan's wall of glass-and-steel towers was a pleasant but unnecessary backdrop to the diversions on this side of the river. After passing through rustic gardens, I followed the shore through the park, which makes an L-shaped cap to the corner of Brooklyn that faces the Lower East Side.

I stopped to watch a weekend youth soccer league on pristine green fields laid atop one of the six piers being reused as parkland between Atlantic Avenue and the Brooklyn Bridge. After sitting for a while at one of the shaded picnic tables between piers, enjoying the cool breeze off the river, I moved on toward the inescapable bridge.

Some of Brooklyn's (and New York's) biggest moments are tied to this portion of waterfront. Gen. George Washington fled to Manhattan from nearby, saving colonial forces and the war. Robert Fulton's new steam ferry service started here in 1814, giving the landing its name and forever changing the relationship between the two enormous cities. And the greatest bridge of its age was finally completed in the 1880s, further changing how the cities interacted.

Now, the DUMBO neighborhood (an acronym for "down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass") has changed how the cities interact again - more residents from the island are coming over to experience the arty enclave of galleries, performance spaces and fashionable boutiques in what had been an industrial zone.

On one stretch of Jay Street that had been waterfront warehouses, I found the Brooklyn Roasting Co., the Olympia Wine Bar and Pedro's, a festive Mexican bar and restaurant that seems designed to bring in the young, arty crowd in the neighborhood.

It's not all boutiques by unknowns - a few blocks over is Jacques Torres Chocolate, founded by the famous pastry chef and filled with all manner of items made from chocolate, including women's shoes.

Booth-based dining

If the neighborhood wasn't getting enough attention on its own, the Smorgasburg would make up for it. Operated by the same people who run the Brooklyn Flea weekend markets, Smorgasburg puts 70 or so culinary companies (most don't have a brick-and-mortar restaurant, existing just out of food trucks or in booths for events) together with a young, hungry crowd for whom the socializing and standing in lines is as important as the meal.

I avoided the longer lines, but still managed to score a pulled pork sandwich, macarons, a variety of pickled things and three styles of taco. Needing to walk off the food coma (and escape further temptation), I ambled toward the hulking stone bridge nearby.

I had grown up with an eye on crossing the Brooklyn Bridge someday - driven not so much by the structure's history and architecture as by the end of a Merrie Melodies cartoon with Bugs Bunny. Taking photos of it from nearly every angle on this trip was doing little to subdue the urge.

But there was still plenty more of the downtown to cover, another park to check out and friends waiting at a funky bar on Henry Street.

And besides, there wasn't anything on the other side that I needed.

If you go

Check if your hotel has a shuttle from the airport. Otherwise, a cab ride from JFK to Downtown Brooklyn can run $35-$45, depending on destination and traffic.